On Wed, 2002-10-16 at 16:27, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > Suppose for a moment that the automobile industry had developed at > the same rate as computers and over the same period: There would be one brand of car control system that would have approximately 90% of the market share. It would often simply stop working --- or start working very erratically --- until one turned off the car and turned it on again. Cars using this control system would start out relatively responsive, but over the course of a few months, start to require longer and longer to respond to commands until simple things like steering became impossible. Eventually, the only solution would be to carefully disassemble the car to remove the control system --- which would be very heavily intertwined with every last bit of the car, from the engine to the paint job --- and then promptly put it back. The dominate control system would often unexpectedly give control to another person, or to another car. Usually, part of the effect would be to take control of other cars with that same control system. Cars taken control of wouldn't even need be in the vicinity; often, it would be done from halfway around the world. The control system in this taken-over state will sometimes endeavor to kill the owner, or at least menace him. Cars with the dominate control system would include contracts --- which you agree to by touching any part of the car --- to not in any way observe the car to determine how it functions; to not in any way look at the component pieces to hypothesize about their reason for existence; to not modify the car in any way, including changing the color of the paint job; to not produce replacement parts (and doing so would be illegal, too) and to not allow anyone --- even family --- to borrow the car. Cars would come with "Driver Rights Management" features which would allow the car manufacturer to arbitrarily and without warning disable the car, remotely. In addition, the production, use, and distribution of tools, knowledge, and procedures that might allow people to circumvent any of the above restrictions would be banned. Occasionally, out of the blue, an advertisement would pop up over a quarter of the windshield, right in front of the driver's face. The driver would have to take his hands off the wheel, and carefully peel off the advertisement in order to see well again. Also, at least a few times per drive, the radio would just turn itself on --- or change the station --- and set itself to maximum volume to play an obnoxious ad for a questionably legal product. The frequency of these would increase exponentially; pretty soon, the radio would just stay on, always with those ads. Soon after than, there would be multiple ones playing on top of each other. Most people would consider the above paragraphs normal, and even necessary to prevent the economy from collapsing. There would be many other control systems, of which much if not all of the above three paragraphs do not apply, but they'd all be considered either to hard to use or to expensive. [I could go on...]
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